How-To Geek

It’s no secret that smart light switches are better buys than smart light bulbs, but I don’t have any smart switches installed yet. That’s what led me to devise a delightfully devilish hack that still lets me use my existing light switches to turn on my smart bulbs in a pinch.

Raspberry Pi OS has a new way to set the Wi-Fi network name and password, SSH access, and other options while you install it. The latest update switched to cloud-init, so setting up a Pi from scratch is more like other Linux systems.

You may have seen some articles in the Windows news (and there's a lot of it these days) talking about Microsoft doing everything it can to remove the option for a "local" account from Windows installations. If you've never had to go hunting for this option, you might wonder what the big deal is. However, even if it doesn't affect your directly, the fight to keep a local account option on Windows is an important one.

It’s all over YouTube, TikTok, and other social media services—everyone wants to know how to turn off AI features in Google’s Gmail service. People are simply uncomfortable with the idea that an AI model is reading through their mail, training itself on their personal data.

Hopefully, you're extending your Thanksgiving festivities into a nice, long weekend. But whether you are or not, why not sink into a real and enlightening documentary anyway? It takes some digging, but Prime Video is quietly stacked with docs that are just as riveting as any scripted series—from gorgeous nature shows to deep dives into the nooks and crannies of pop culture, sports, and beyond.

You can control Home Assistant directly from your phone by opening the app, navigating to the dashboard you want to use, finding the button you need, and then tapping it. It's not exactly the easiest process. Thankfully, your phone already has a much better way to interact with Home Assistant: widgets.

It's Black Friday! So stop procrastinating and get to shopping before the deals start selling out.

I just got my first Arduino board and have already been having a ton of fun with it. Of course, I started with the simple projects so I could learn to walk before running. Here are the first three Arduino projects I did, along with the code I used to accomplish each task.

The ASUS RT-BE92U BE9700 is a great Wi-Fi 7 router, and I know that because I bought two of them for my home. It's now on sale for Black Friday, with the price dropping to $190 at Amazon and $200 at Best Buy.

This morning, I turned on my TV and was surprised to find my favorite YouTube app had vanished from the home screen. SmartTube, which is a popular app with tons of personalization settings, has been removed by Google due to a security concern—but a new version is available.

In recent weeks, Microsoft has focused on broadening AI capabilities in Excel, modernizing the program's interface, and speeding up your spreadsheet workflow. Here are four new features to look out for this December.

It doesn't matter if you have a beastly GPU and a fantastic CPU. If your SSD is struggling, so will your entire PC.

Drama and action movies are the go-to genres, fine. But sometimes you don't just want a movie—you want a full-on spectacle. Musicals aren't for everyone, I get it. But Netflix actually has a great selection of some of the better ones I've seen recently. They're big on emotion and can often be dark and serious, but they also excel at eye-popping set pieces and stories that are magical and surreal.

There’s no shortage of smart-home security options on the market, but products range from basic and barely functional to high-tech and astronomically priced. The far ends of the spectrum come with too many trade-offs, but shrewd consumers know that there’s a sweet spot. High-tech smart-home brand Botslab hits that middle ground with affordable, high-end smart-home products powered by AI — without subscriptions or paywalled features.

If you’ve always wanted a fun, lightweight sports car but assumed reliability and affordability were out of reach, the used market says otherwise. For well under $25,000, there’s a Japanese-built two-seater that has quietly become one of the most dependable performance cars you can buy. It delivers the kind of open-air driving experience enthusiasts love, yet it’s also cheap to run, easy to maintain, and built to last hundreds of thousands of miles.

Toyota’s done something crazy. That wild GR GT3 Concept from the 2022 Tokyo Auto Salon is now hitting the streets as a real car—and it finally has a name: the GR GT.

ASUS has released a new high-end router with tri-band Wi-Fi 7 support, up to 31 Gigabits of wired bandwidth, and the ability to run Docker containers. It's also billed as "the world's first AI router," because it's 2025 and everything needs AI.

You're only a true geek if you have a huge box or drawer full of cables that you don't actually need but are keeping on the off chance. Not every cable is created equal, however. There are some cables that have connectors that are so frustrating they should be banished to tech hell forever.

I’ve been conditioned to believe that opening up gadgets is the domain of experts and professionals. But the idea that the simple act of changing a battery is beyond the realm of mere mortals like you and me is a lie.

There are two ways to measure the performance of PC components: synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark or PCMark, and real-world benchmarks that test performance in games and various software using real-life scenarios. The latter's much better, here's why.